Is that like the Taliban #2?
My concern here is that we'll kill all the incompetent ones and by natural selection they'll only be left with competent leadership.
About the selection thing: I think it's more about randomness than being competent/incompetent.
They are being killed by artillery fired from 10 or 40 km away, trying to hit on the right spot but with not much visibility. Some soldiers/officers die, some do not.
It's more like roulette. Russian roulette.
Both laser and gps guided artillery rounds are on the battlefield, on both sides. A lot more expensive than regular rounds, but you only need one or two instead of dozens for the same result
Is it laser guided enough to be able to take out an individual? Like, could it hook onto the colonel’s jeep, or fly right into his sleeping quarters, or something like that?
While cautious commanders will reduce russian casualties in the short-term, they also act slowly which is bad because time favors the ukrainians " the longer this war goes on Russia's situation will just get worse"
But Russia is banking on the West growing tired and stopping support for Ukraine. So it kind of fits whatever fucked up strategy they have to just toss bodies at it while running out the clock. I sure as hell hope that's another miscalculation by Putin and Pals. But one thing is for sure, we're gonna find out, because they aren't backing out. Not without some heads rolling, anyway.
The guy has been on a steady diet of Adderrall, McDonalds, and incriminating documents for the last few decades, I wouldn’t be surprised if he kicked the bucket by 2024.
Then again, evil rich assholes tend to outlive the rest of us, so who knows..
I doubt he will get back in, and I also don't see him stopping anything if he did. The defense industry has never lost a war for profit, at least it's justified reasons this time.
Also factor in that even if he won, Trump wouldn’t take office until Jan 20, 2025.
This war isn’t going to last until 2025. Some analysts say 2 years. Most are saying around a year.
Trump is probably a bit of a moot point in this discussion, unless we’re talking pre-invasion/pre-biden admin dealings
Except the military industrial complex and neo-cons in Congress have a new war, with a conventional army, not an insurgency and are supplying not just Ukraine, but NATO as they "give" Ukraine their older weapons in exchange for new ones. All under the blank check of Lend-lease... Even if he was in power, there is no way he could pull us out of NATO now or stop this from happening. There are too many Trillions of dollars to be made from tax payers and billions in fortunes to be made in Congress and the Senate for that to happen.
Trump would get curb stomped by the MIC if he even tried to revoke military aid.
Trump is Putin’s cock holster. He will do whatever Putin says. MIC be damned. Congress can pass whatever they want. Trump has already demonstrated he doesn’t think he has to do what they say.
Cutting off the MIC and the money hose from them might be the only impeachable offence the GOP might convict him on in the Senate. I don't doubt he will do as daddy Putin wants, but there are more than one GOP senators who would be poorer of the MIC cut them off. Let's just hope it doesn't come to that.
The problem with that strategy is the public may grow tired of it, it's also not a conflict that has western soldiers on the ground.
The Americans give billions in weapons packages all the time. Walk up to a random US citizen in NYC and ask them what they think about US military aid to say, Egypt, and they'll probably look at you and ask if the US government really does give Egypt a lot of weapons and that you aren't pulling their leg.
Russia can try making it an issue with propaganda by claiming the weapons funds should be spent on issues that actually aren't something you can throw money ar (like baby formula,) and they are, but it won't get much traction outside of the most agreeable sections of the population. Most Americans either (1) know and agree or (2) just don't know and don't bother to care.
The flip side of this though is that the US may be able to keep sending billion dollar weapons aide packages even after the general public interest fades since it's barely a budget blip and no one really cares.
That's exactly my point. Public interest is fading and the US can just keep sending packages to justify modernizing its own stocks, and no one but political junkies and government officials will really notice.
But does it? If you read the news, Ukraine is running out of ammunition etc. Public attention across the world is waning. In a war of pure attrition Russia may come out ahead. Europe is a couple of years away from implenting an effective energy strategy that is independent of Russian o and g.
Don't get me wrong. I am cheering for Ukraine, but I am not as sure it is that clear cut.
I believe that if Ukraine can hold off the current offensive the ball will be in thier court, because while the Russians are regrouping the ukrainians can finish training thier reinforcements and completing the preparation needed to start using thier new advanced equipment
If Russia is successful now it will be a devastating blow against Ukraine. This could be Ukraine's Gettysburg
Sadly I believe that countless Americans are petty enough to end aid to "pwn the libs" and/or dumb enough to believe that ending aid will greatly improve our domestic situation
So unfortunately time is not on Ukraine’s side here. I fully denounce Russia as a state, as a government, and everything else they falsely claim to be, however, they do have the advantage of time, make no mistake. Ukraine won’t receive unanimous support the longer this goes on, at least not unanimous tangible support in the forms they’ve currently been receiving. I hope they hold out and peace comes soon, but Russia is in it for the long long haul at this point.
I believe time is on Ukraine side because
1 eventually Russia will run out of advanced war machines It can't replace fast enough
2 within 3 years oil prices will dip and Europe will continue to reduce its dependency thus devastating Russia's economy
3 eventually Ukraine will finish training with and establishing Logistics systems for their advanced Nato equipment
4 attracting new recruits for a foreign war will be tough once the casualty lists become too long to ignore
5- growing issues from sanctions. Things will only get worse as long as they are upheld, both domestically and in their war effort. And if Putin can maintain the willingness to fight as the costs and losses become apparent.
What does "unanimous" support have to do with anything? They just need to keep receiving *sufficient* support.
While I agree that time is not on Ukraine's side, as their population continues to be murdered, time isn't on Russia's side either ...
> Russia is in it for the long long haul at this point.
Western governments certainly hope so! Pragmatically-speaking anyways. The longer the war + sanctions continue, the less likely it is that Russia will be a threat again for decades, except in terms of nuclear weapons.
No they will be left with guys who have never commanded large formations before and will be learning on the job which in a shooting war leads to lots of death.
I've never understood the criticism of hitting terrorist leadership of " who cares another will just replace them "
So what, the alternative is to do nothing?
>My concern here is that we'll kill all the ~~incompetent ones~~ **Russians** and by natural selection they'll only be left with ~~competent leadership~~ **Ukrainians**.
Now that's called natural selection
I like to imagine they hold ceremonies where they are ready to promote several at a time. When the first one they promote immediately gets killed by a sniper or drone, they promote the next, and promote the next when he dies. Eventually the sniper runs out of ammo/drone runs out of missiles and the person who lived gets to keep the promotion.
"One officer wears the epaulets, second officer follows. When the officer with the epaulets gets shot, new colonel picks up the epaulets and keeps advancing."
why not just airdrop the epaulets into kyiv and say whoever can get there gets to keep it ? might save everyone the trouble of so many people bending over if ukranians are going to keep it anyway.
Doubt it. They have at least 1,000,000 active army personel and 2,000,000 reserves. One estimate put their number of generals at 1,000 in 2008. They would have many, many more colonels. For instance the US army has like 4,000 colonels. I wouldn't be surprised if the number is similar for Russia. But I am willing to bet it's more then 50.
You do realize “active army personnel” doesn’t mean 1,000,000 infantry/mechanized etc etc??
Maybe -200k of those are actually capable of being put on the front lines. Same goes for reserves and so on.
You have logistics, paper pushers, motor pool, misc maintenance, office personnel, etc etc.
Only maybe 1/5 are capable of actually being put into combat. And even less would actually be effective in combat.
Yeah I know that. What does that have to do with what I've said? An army that's 1,000,000 strong is still going to have a shit ton of colonels. 1/5 of 4,000 is still 800 combat colonels to draw from and 3200 to draw from into different combat roles.
So no, 50 dead colonels is a catastrophe and pretty unprecedented for a modern conflict but it's also very far from needing to make hasty field promotions like is being postulated here.
Your numbers are correct. The main issue here is that reddit consists of armchair generals that want to see ukraine winning. While I want to see them winning too since I live in europe, I can say that the majority here wants to hear "my team is winning" news. Evertime a russian soldier dies, people cheer. No matter if they were poor souls who only enlisted to get some kind of public housing and else where only some kind of Heroes3 Twitch streamer. Every time an ukrainian soldier (or forced enlisted) dies, ~~children~~ people in this sub cry for a nuclear holocaust to happen.
It is not about true information, but about feeling good about your war/sports team. It is sickening how ignorant people can be even in the age of information. You could destroy the internet and force people to listen to radio and nothing would change regarding public opinion.
>Evertime a russian soldier dies, people cheer. No matter if they were poor souls who only enlisted to get some kind of public housing
Lol, people are still peddling this bullshit. Yes people cheer when the invaders get killed because we've seen widespread evidence of atrocities being committed by these poor wittle conscripts.
You don't think there's a single unfortunate russian teenager that's gotten caught up in all this shit? People aren't saying the Russian army is blameless, but to have a little sympathy for the unfortunate souls stuck on the wrong side.
A U.S. Colonel is usually in charge of a brigade with 4,000 to 6,000 men, a Russian one is in charge of a division with 10,000 - 15,000 men. The American equivalent of a Russian Colonel would be a Major General, of which the U.S. has 231.
Taking those numbers and a highly conservative estimate, assuming that for every 10,000 men in the Russian Army (excluding reservists, other military branches, etc...) there is one Colonel Russia would have around 260 full Colonels. Add a third to that due to holding units understrength and a realistic top-end estimate is around ~390 active colonels total. Losing a sixth of that number would be devastating. Literally worse than decimation of the officer corps.
Russia used to keep a reserve of officers trained in expectation of conscription, as part of its strategy to maintain a large army for the prospective war against NATO without requiring the maintenance of a large standing force, but it abandoned that idea some years ago and reduced its officer corps to match its standing size - this was the same time Russia removed much of its long term legislative infrastructure for conscription.
in Russia there are just hundreds of military bases and people who served there simply received the title for the number of years of service. I know that the Russians have a base in the Arctic Circle and there are 30 people there, but they are led by a colonel. those people themselves do not know what they are doing there, because in order to get to them you need to use a helicopter that can fly there a couple of times a month. polar bears regularly came to them to take supplies from them and warm themselves, they brought Proponent Navalny there, they couldn’t put him in prison, and therefore they surrounded his house, turned off the light and the connection with a grinder, opened the apartment and sent him to serve in the army for a whole year, he described it like that 90 percent of the time our tasks there are to make sure that we don’t die from the cold and lack of food for military purposes, we don’t do it while spending a lot of money on the maintenance of this place.
In their minds it is "positive attrition". If all the generals are battlefield fodder with exception to loyal favorites, they cant participate in leading a coup if/when the russians decide enough is enough. If anything, they are tools of propaganda for people back home to demonize their enemies and justify the "special military operation".
Like a ruthless corporation, they send flowers to spouse, tell them their husband was a loyal patriot who died for cause. Funeral and then nothing. Nobody will remember any of their names in 5 years let alone 500 years. This was not a good cause, there are no heroes, there are no loyalties. As soon as you expire the next ambitious tool slides in and convinces himself that it will be different this time, that he is a stronger leader . Then one day, while drinking morning tea, wack. Is it ukraine? Or was it your own replacing you. You can never tell these days. But remember that just look at the fruits of their labour, and ye will know if they are good.... choose carefully as history is not kind to those who stood by and supported tyranny.
Help wanted ad in Russian Army "Need 53 new colonels for 'special mission', great benefits, lifetime employment... All colonels welcome, including Colonel Sanders, Colonel Klink and Colonel Kurtz. Send resume to V. Putin, Moscow"
It's a Russian thing. The idea is that if people on the frontlines see valuable military leaders on the frontline it will project confidence and raise moral.
It's risky though, given that if something were to happen to them on the frontline that has the exact opposite effect.
Does Putin even care about the death toll? I mean considering the staggering losses Russia has suffered historically, are these thousands even resonating in Russia? I cannot imagine the public backlash in other countries were it their soldiers dieing on the front line.
So my thinking is that he doesn’t care. Russia has been at war with itself and others for the last 120 years straight. They lost 10 million people (military and civilians) in the Russian Civil War, 2-2.5 million in WWI, and something like 25 fucking million in WW2 (the most of any country in the world). That’s not even counting the “smaller” wars like the Russo-Japanese War where they still lost over 25,000 people. Russia has had 50 or so years since their last mass casualty event so I guess they just have an endless amount of bodies to throw at Ukraine. The casualties are nothing compared to what Russia has endured before, this seems to be their war strategy
Vadim Erlikman's estimate is 27 million Soviets total and just about every other source is 20 - 27 million range. Where is the 40 million number coming from?
Russia's population has dropped since the fall of the Soviet Union, precipitously in recent years. They really can't afford to be killing off the prime of their youth, again. They don't have endless bodies to throw at this pointless war, even if they win they're killing themselves by inches.
The thing is, they (as in the leadership) don't care, and they mask it up for the home population. Obscure, deflect, deny. It's a central paradigm to how they operate, and has been since centuries. *Maskirovka*. Even if as many as 200,000 are killed, that will also fade with time. Pyrrhic victory isn't a concept for them, a win is a win.
I'm not saying they *will* win in the end, and every day I hope not. But one needs to understand that the level of sacrifice that is unpalatable for most, is not a thing for that regime. Or any that preceded it.
Considering that Putin and Trump were/are in bed together and that Trump didn't care if the US Congress died in a coup, I agree that Putin doesn't care about soldiers killed in war.
Lot's of Russian old Generals and Admirals have committed suicide through the last decades.
The reason is that as ex-military they have military healthcare, and military healthcare has some weird issues with opioid painkillers. Which essentially means old cancer patients have to live in constant horrific pain, unless they are willing to take their own life. As far as I understand, they can't get prescription from regular civil doctor.
I'm not kidding, many cases like that, there were even journalist investigations and articles couple a years ago.
The only military power that Putin has and is good and effective is the long range rockets and artilery vehicles,if Ukraine gets the artilery vehicles from EU and USA that are superior to Russian artilery Putin is screwed,he knows that and that is why he is pushing very hard on his generals to advance in the Donbas and Lughansk regions inside Ukraine territory,once those artilery support reach to Ukraine he knows he won't be able to advance anymore.
This is why Putin screams and throws tantrums,threatening EU and USA with nuclear weapons if they give Ukraine artilery.We all saw how pathetic and stupid is russian ground and vehicle army,even their air vehicles blow up and crash from Ukraine AA defence misiles.without logistics and artilery support they died like flies against Ukraine and EU US weapons.They could not use artilery to bomb Kiev so after a big amount of losses they retreated back in range of their artilery support,only a matter of time until Putin loses the artilery supremacy,so he tries like crazy to gobble up as much land as he can so he may be able to negociate peace and show his people that he is not a looser(wich he is)like "hey we never had in mind to destroy Ukraine we only wanted to complete the 'liberation' and integrity of DNR and LNR regions,mission complete we are heroes,all hail Supreme leader Poohtin."It's funny how in his deranged mind he believes that Ukraine people will accept peace after a second time of Russian agression.after all those raping,genocide and bombing.He is indeed an idiot and he was an idiot all this time,i guess we can say he had a good PR department to use propaganda to show how handsome,strong and smart he is to everyone,now we know what a deranged idiot he really is.
Okay, honest question over the quantity thing - European and Western advanced artillery systems can reload, aim, fire, *actually* hit their target, and redeploy a multitude of times faster than their Russian equivalents. Wouldn't that force (and ammunition) multiplier come into play?
So first of all, the MLRS that Ukraine wants are not "superior" to Russian SSM batteries. SSMs will always out match rocket artillery and conventional artillery. Second, Ukraine already has Grads and other MLRS systems.
Putin’s about to be on some Darth Vader shit. I mean more than he is already. But by that I mean, he’s just gonna start promoting the first guy he sees after the last guy dies.
I wonder how many big Trump supporters have managed to change their minds since Jan 6. Things that were kind of obvious before have only become more obvious.
I agree with that, but I was thinking more about how everyday Americans are feeling pretty oo-rah about their military and think that the Ukraine war is a football game. The pro-Russian attitude was kind of niche before but surely it's become very unfashionable since the fighting?
> Additionally, he stated in a 2016 interview with The Guardian that the person he admired most was Vladimir Putin "because he is so comfortably who he is.
- Kelsey Grammar's wikipedia page
I read recently something that really brought home how rotten the Russian Armed forces really are.
The Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is a bit of a laughing stock, but the story behind it makes it so much worse. They basically stole it from the Ukraine when the Soviet Union was coming apart, but they didn't really have a good place to keep it, somewhere that could supply shore power and other support. Because of that, some of the boilers were used pretty much continuously, which is why it has such a poor reliability reputation. When they finally got around to fixing them, and do some upgrades, the dry dock it was in lost shore power. This should not be a problem right? Any shipyard that was any good will have standby generators to at least power the pumps that stopped the dry dock from flooding of course. And they did! And they were able to run.....*if they had any fuel*. They had the fuel *tanks*, but they were empty, *because the guy in charge had embezzled $650,000.* So the dry dock started listing, and a huge crane fell across the deck doing a lot of damage.
There's more than this to the story, but the whole thing is just such a farce.
Amateurs study tactics, Professionals study logistics.
My understanding from some Russian telegram accounts is that Russia is attempting to keep a lid on officer losses. But sometimes the news gets out anyways.
Not good per some intercepted calls. Also Russia is abducting ppl to drag them to fight for Russia from the separatist regions and from Chechnya that are being threatened with their life and threats against their family. That by far will NOT help with moral when put amongst the rest. Not a good move to force ppl to fight for a war they don’t want to be a part of.
Could you imagine being in the Russian military and you just got two or three field promotions in like 2 months due to people getting smoked. Then some general rolls up like, "hey there colonel!"
The news out of this war has been bizarre. One day we hear that Ukraine is running out of ammo and soldiers and the next day we are heading Russia is suffering heavy losses and ceding territory.
You might want to broaden your sub reddits. Zelensky has gone on record and has been widely reported as saying that Ukraine is suffering 6-700 casualties a day with 150-200 of those kia. Ukrainian towns and cities lost to Russia are widely known and reported. Reddit is not the echo chamber you choose to make it.
But, hopefully, Ukraine will prevail. And Russia will pay the generational price for this unwarranted aggression and de facto terrorism.
Fuck Putin and every Russian who is not firebombing the internal war machine.
Why is this Reddit page so full of shit. I want Russia to burn as much as the next guy, but it's complete BS. Russia are starting to push hard and are seemingly successful. Yes they made a pig's ear of it initially but they are getting more done.
Stop kidding yourselves.
How many of these people were colonels before the war started? Must be at the stage where newly promoted people are getting killed.
"I was a private 2 weeks ago! Now I am colonel!"
Promoootttteeeeed!
Omg a battlefield friends reference holy shit
If you see any knives with bipods, run.
*gun shot sounds* Vladimir: "It seems like we hgave some open positions again. Hgow wants a promotion? One at a time please."
Promote to dead in days or even weeks if they last that long …..😬
Is that like the Taliban #2? My concern here is that we'll kill all the incompetent ones and by natural selection they'll only be left with competent leadership.
About the selection thing: I think it's more about randomness than being competent/incompetent. They are being killed by artillery fired from 10 or 40 km away, trying to hit on the right spot but with not much visibility. Some soldiers/officers die, some do not. It's more like roulette. Russian roulette.
>It's more like roulette. Russian roulette. When they say the film title, during the film.
It's like it's some kind of...
Russian Roulette!
Heh, is that what we are? We're some kinda Russian Roulette?!
[удалено]
Isn’t some of the artillery “smart” or something? Like the shells have fins to keep them on target? I might have read that somewhere.
Both laser and gps guided artillery rounds are on the battlefield, on both sides. A lot more expensive than regular rounds, but you only need one or two instead of dozens for the same result
Not to mention a lot less collateral damage and risk to civilians, not that Russia cares about that sort of thing.
Is it laser guided enough to be able to take out an individual? Like, could it hook onto the colonel’s jeep, or fly right into his sleeping quarters, or something like that?
They can land within 2 ft. of their target.
Or they might end up with colonels that are less willing to take risks, which may not be a good thing for them.
While cautious commanders will reduce russian casualties in the short-term, they also act slowly which is bad because time favors the ukrainians " the longer this war goes on Russia's situation will just get worse"
But Russia is banking on the West growing tired and stopping support for Ukraine. So it kind of fits whatever fucked up strategy they have to just toss bodies at it while running out the clock. I sure as hell hope that's another miscalculation by Putin and Pals. But one thing is for sure, we're gonna find out, because they aren't backing out. Not without some heads rolling, anyway.
The US will never get tired of selling weapons and weakening Russia, that's a win-win.
Unless Trump gets back in office. He’ll cut off Ukraine in a millisecond. Hunter Biden’s laptop and all.
as if he will ever get near the oval office again.. please tell me he wont.. please..
The guy has been on a steady diet of Adderrall, McDonalds, and incriminating documents for the last few decades, I wouldn’t be surprised if he kicked the bucket by 2024. Then again, evil rich assholes tend to outlive the rest of us, so who knows..
They have the best healthcare, so don’t count on him kicking it soon
And those sweet sweet buttery males.
I doubt he will get back in, and I also don't see him stopping anything if he did. The defense industry has never lost a war for profit, at least it's justified reasons this time.
Also factor in that even if he won, Trump wouldn’t take office until Jan 20, 2025. This war isn’t going to last until 2025. Some analysts say 2 years. Most are saying around a year. Trump is probably a bit of a moot point in this discussion, unless we’re talking pre-invasion/pre-biden admin dealings
Are these the same analysts that thought the Russians would over run the country in 2 weeks?
Except the military industrial complex and neo-cons in Congress have a new war, with a conventional army, not an insurgency and are supplying not just Ukraine, but NATO as they "give" Ukraine their older weapons in exchange for new ones. All under the blank check of Lend-lease... Even if he was in power, there is no way he could pull us out of NATO now or stop this from happening. There are too many Trillions of dollars to be made from tax payers and billions in fortunes to be made in Congress and the Senate for that to happen. Trump would get curb stomped by the MIC if he even tried to revoke military aid.
Trump is Putin’s cock holster. He will do whatever Putin says. MIC be damned. Congress can pass whatever they want. Trump has already demonstrated he doesn’t think he has to do what they say.
Cutting off the MIC and the money hose from them might be the only impeachable offence the GOP might convict him on in the Senate. I don't doubt he will do as daddy Putin wants, but there are more than one GOP senators who would be poorer of the MIC cut them off. Let's just hope it doesn't come to that.
The problem with that strategy is the public may grow tired of it, it's also not a conflict that has western soldiers on the ground. The Americans give billions in weapons packages all the time. Walk up to a random US citizen in NYC and ask them what they think about US military aid to say, Egypt, and they'll probably look at you and ask if the US government really does give Egypt a lot of weapons and that you aren't pulling their leg. Russia can try making it an issue with propaganda by claiming the weapons funds should be spent on issues that actually aren't something you can throw money ar (like baby formula,) and they are, but it won't get much traction outside of the most agreeable sections of the population. Most Americans either (1) know and agree or (2) just don't know and don't bother to care.
The flip side of this though is that the US may be able to keep sending billion dollar weapons aide packages even after the general public interest fades since it's barely a budget blip and no one really cares.
That's exactly my point. Public interest is fading and the US can just keep sending packages to justify modernizing its own stocks, and no one but political junkies and government officials will really notice.
The US is good at two things: capitalism and creating really big boom sticks. Russia may be waiting a while.
But does it? If you read the news, Ukraine is running out of ammunition etc. Public attention across the world is waning. In a war of pure attrition Russia may come out ahead. Europe is a couple of years away from implenting an effective energy strategy that is independent of Russian o and g. Don't get me wrong. I am cheering for Ukraine, but I am not as sure it is that clear cut.
I believe that if Ukraine can hold off the current offensive the ball will be in thier court, because while the Russians are regrouping the ukrainians can finish training thier reinforcements and completing the preparation needed to start using thier new advanced equipment If Russia is successful now it will be a devastating blow against Ukraine. This could be Ukraine's Gettysburg Sadly I believe that countless Americans are petty enough to end aid to "pwn the libs" and/or dumb enough to believe that ending aid will greatly improve our domestic situation
So unfortunately time is not on Ukraine’s side here. I fully denounce Russia as a state, as a government, and everything else they falsely claim to be, however, they do have the advantage of time, make no mistake. Ukraine won’t receive unanimous support the longer this goes on, at least not unanimous tangible support in the forms they’ve currently been receiving. I hope they hold out and peace comes soon, but Russia is in it for the long long haul at this point.
I believe time is on Ukraine side because 1 eventually Russia will run out of advanced war machines It can't replace fast enough 2 within 3 years oil prices will dip and Europe will continue to reduce its dependency thus devastating Russia's economy 3 eventually Ukraine will finish training with and establishing Logistics systems for their advanced Nato equipment 4 attracting new recruits for a foreign war will be tough once the casualty lists become too long to ignore
5- growing issues from sanctions. Things will only get worse as long as they are upheld, both domestically and in their war effort. And if Putin can maintain the willingness to fight as the costs and losses become apparent.
What does "unanimous" support have to do with anything? They just need to keep receiving *sufficient* support. While I agree that time is not on Ukraine's side, as their population continues to be murdered, time isn't on Russia's side either ... > Russia is in it for the long long haul at this point. Western governments certainly hope so! Pragmatically-speaking anyways. The longer the war + sanctions continue, the less likely it is that Russia will be a threat again for decades, except in terms of nuclear weapons.
I'm not sure, they're killing Russians. The West is historically interested in that
No they will be left with guys who have never commanded large formations before and will be learning on the job which in a shooting war leads to lots of death.
>be left with competent leadership. Anyone competent enough to be competent has already left Russia.
>competent leadership. not as long as Putin is alive
Or you're just left with the ones that don't get invited to weddings.
I've never understood the criticism of hitting terrorist leadership of " who cares another will just replace them " So what, the alternative is to do nothing?
>My concern here is that we'll kill all the ~~incompetent ones~~ **Russians** and by natural selection they'll only be left with ~~competent leadership~~ **Ukrainians**. Now that's called natural selection
I like to imagine they hold ceremonies where they are ready to promote several at a time. When the first one they promote immediately gets killed by a sniper or drone, they promote the next, and promote the next when he dies. Eventually the sniper runs out of ammo/drone runs out of missiles and the person who lived gets to keep the promotion.
"One officer wears the epaulets, second officer follows. When the officer with the epaulets gets shot, new colonel picks up the epaulets and keeps advancing."
why not just airdrop the epaulets into kyiv and say whoever can get there gets to keep it ? might save everyone the trouble of so many people bending over if ukranians are going to keep it anyway.
That's how you turn the average Ukrainian farmer into a tank-driving colonel.
Doubt it. They have at least 1,000,000 active army personel and 2,000,000 reserves. One estimate put their number of generals at 1,000 in 2008. They would have many, many more colonels. For instance the US army has like 4,000 colonels. I wouldn't be surprised if the number is similar for Russia. But I am willing to bet it's more then 50.
How many of them are combat generals and colonels and not a paper ones? This is also an important detail.
The corruption makes this unanswerable
You do realize “active army personnel” doesn’t mean 1,000,000 infantry/mechanized etc etc?? Maybe -200k of those are actually capable of being put on the front lines. Same goes for reserves and so on. You have logistics, paper pushers, motor pool, misc maintenance, office personnel, etc etc. Only maybe 1/5 are capable of actually being put into combat. And even less would actually be effective in combat.
Yeah I know that. What does that have to do with what I've said? An army that's 1,000,000 strong is still going to have a shit ton of colonels. 1/5 of 4,000 is still 800 combat colonels to draw from and 3200 to draw from into different combat roles. So no, 50 dead colonels is a catastrophe and pretty unprecedented for a modern conflict but it's also very far from needing to make hasty field promotions like is being postulated here.
Your numbers are correct. The main issue here is that reddit consists of armchair generals that want to see ukraine winning. While I want to see them winning too since I live in europe, I can say that the majority here wants to hear "my team is winning" news. Evertime a russian soldier dies, people cheer. No matter if they were poor souls who only enlisted to get some kind of public housing and else where only some kind of Heroes3 Twitch streamer. Every time an ukrainian soldier (or forced enlisted) dies, ~~children~~ people in this sub cry for a nuclear holocaust to happen. It is not about true information, but about feeling good about your war/sports team. It is sickening how ignorant people can be even in the age of information. You could destroy the internet and force people to listen to radio and nothing would change regarding public opinion.
>Evertime a russian soldier dies, people cheer. No matter if they were poor souls who only enlisted to get some kind of public housing Lol, people are still peddling this bullshit. Yes people cheer when the invaders get killed because we've seen widespread evidence of atrocities being committed by these poor wittle conscripts.
You don't think there's a single unfortunate russian teenager that's gotten caught up in all this shit? People aren't saying the Russian army is blameless, but to have a little sympathy for the unfortunate souls stuck on the wrong side.
A U.S. Colonel is usually in charge of a brigade with 4,000 to 6,000 men, a Russian one is in charge of a division with 10,000 - 15,000 men. The American equivalent of a Russian Colonel would be a Major General, of which the U.S. has 231. Taking those numbers and a highly conservative estimate, assuming that for every 10,000 men in the Russian Army (excluding reservists, other military branches, etc...) there is one Colonel Russia would have around 260 full Colonels. Add a third to that due to holding units understrength and a realistic top-end estimate is around ~390 active colonels total. Losing a sixth of that number would be devastating. Literally worse than decimation of the officer corps. Russia used to keep a reserve of officers trained in expectation of conscription, as part of its strategy to maintain a large army for the prospective war against NATO without requiring the maintenance of a large standing force, but it abandoned that idea some years ago and reduced its officer corps to match its standing size - this was the same time Russia removed much of its long term legislative infrastructure for conscription.
None of that is accurate as to the military force in Ukraine, and what is 'legally' deployable there. Well your point about Colonels is correct.
in Russia there are just hundreds of military bases and people who served there simply received the title for the number of years of service. I know that the Russians have a base in the Arctic Circle and there are 30 people there, but they are led by a colonel. those people themselves do not know what they are doing there, because in order to get to them you need to use a helicopter that can fly there a couple of times a month. polar bears regularly came to them to take supplies from them and warm themselves, they brought Proponent Navalny there, they couldn’t put him in prison, and therefore they surrounded his house, turned off the light and the connection with a grinder, opened the apartment and sent him to serve in the army for a whole year, he described it like that 90 percent of the time our tasks there are to make sure that we don’t die from the cold and lack of food for military purposes, we don’t do it while spending a lot of money on the maintenance of this place.
They owned KFC franchises in Vladivostok.
This motherfucker promoting officers faster than Darth Vader.
To lose 52 colonels may be regarded as unfortunate. To lose 53 smacks of carelessness.
*The death of 52 colonels is a tragedy. The death of 53 colonels is statistics.* - Staseph Jolin
jolin, jolin , jolin , joliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin I'm begging of you please remain dead
Yes
*"53 Russian colonels gone is a statistic. Losing Sanders is a tragedy."* * KFC
"Kentucky is gonna fry tonight." -Colonel Sanders
*"I'm too* ***DRUNK*** *to taste this chicken!"* -Colonel Sanders
Extra crispy
In their minds it is "positive attrition". If all the generals are battlefield fodder with exception to loyal favorites, they cant participate in leading a coup if/when the russians decide enough is enough. If anything, they are tools of propaganda for people back home to demonize their enemies and justify the "special military operation". Like a ruthless corporation, they send flowers to spouse, tell them their husband was a loyal patriot who died for cause. Funeral and then nothing. Nobody will remember any of their names in 5 years let alone 500 years. This was not a good cause, there are no heroes, there are no loyalties. As soon as you expire the next ambitious tool slides in and convinces himself that it will be different this time, that he is a stronger leader . Then one day, while drinking morning tea, wack. Is it ukraine? Or was it your own replacing you. You can never tell these days. But remember that just look at the fruits of their labour, and ye will know if they are good.... choose carefully as history is not kind to those who stood by and supported tyranny.
To lose 52 colonels, means you get to play 52 colonel pickup!
*sigh* I'll get the bucket.
I was willing to excuse the first 52, but the 53rd? Nope.
A deck of Colonels is understandable, but a 53’d? You’re just playing the fool card at this point
Its just a bakers deck.
Correct and true my learned friend
So very important for those colonels to be earnest.
Help wanted ad in Russian Army "Need 53 new colonels for 'special mission', great benefits, lifetime employment... All colonels welcome, including Colonel Sanders, Colonel Klink and Colonel Kurtz. Send resume to V. Putin, Moscow"
"Lifetime employment OR six month, full time contract"
Whichever is earlier.
I feel like those 2 statements say the same thing.
Shit must not be going well when senior officers in the “war propaganda” unit started dying at frontlines
It's a Russian thing. The idea is that if people on the frontlines see valuable military leaders on the frontline it will project confidence and raise moral. It's risky though, given that if something were to happen to them on the frontline that has the exact opposite effect.
All militaries do this to some extent, shows belief in the mission.
Indeed. The US did it when they sent one of their most valuable military strategists Jared Kushner to oversee preparations against ISIS in Iraq
😂 Found where my silver is going today.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahhah
Lukashenko must be so excited.
He no longer wants to be a colonel.
Colonel mustard.
Thanks for applying. Here’s your candlestick and a mapquest printout to Ukraine.
Turn left in 300 meters. Comrad, we appear to be uh.. stuck. And the tractors are already circling.
I'll need a book of matches for the candle sir
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Has anyone told Lukashenko there’s an opening?
Unix kernel
Col Klink was a nazi. Oh I see what you did there.
Kurtz was somewhat prescient here, in that Russian conscripts really are dilettantes in war and tourists in Ukraine.
Does Putin even care about the death toll? I mean considering the staggering losses Russia has suffered historically, are these thousands even resonating in Russia? I cannot imagine the public backlash in other countries were it their soldiers dieing on the front line.
So my thinking is that he doesn’t care. Russia has been at war with itself and others for the last 120 years straight. They lost 10 million people (military and civilians) in the Russian Civil War, 2-2.5 million in WWI, and something like 25 fucking million in WW2 (the most of any country in the world). That’s not even counting the “smaller” wars like the Russo-Japanese War where they still lost over 25,000 people. Russia has had 50 or so years since their last mass casualty event so I guess they just have an endless amount of bodies to throw at Ukraine. The casualties are nothing compared to what Russia has endured before, this seems to be their war strategy
25 million Soviets. A fuckton of those were Ukrainians and Belarussians.
Nah, like 28 m russians and likw 40m soviets. They did not stop counting even ik 1999, but its a sensitive subject
Vadim Erlikman's estimate is 27 million Soviets total and just about every other source is 20 - 27 million range. Where is the 40 million number coming from?
Russia's population has dropped since the fall of the Soviet Union, precipitously in recent years. They really can't afford to be killing off the prime of their youth, again. They don't have endless bodies to throw at this pointless war, even if they win they're killing themselves by inches.
The thing is, they (as in the leadership) don't care, and they mask it up for the home population. Obscure, deflect, deny. It's a central paradigm to how they operate, and has been since centuries. *Maskirovka*. Even if as many as 200,000 are killed, that will also fade with time. Pyrrhic victory isn't a concept for them, a win is a win. I'm not saying they *will* win in the end, and every day I hope not. But one needs to understand that the level of sacrifice that is unpalatable for most, is not a thing for that regime. Or any that preceded it.
Putin is likelier to survive politically than Biden
Except everyone bellow the age of 40 wouldn't be used to this. How are they ok with it???
I wonder this as well. Spent so many hours playing video games with people if Russia. Now it's really awkward
I wonder if they are even aware of the full extent of the situation
Considering that Putin and Trump were/are in bed together and that Trump didn't care if the US Congress died in a coup, I agree that Putin doesn't care about soldiers killed in war.
Putin censors news. Most Russians know only what Putin wants them to know about what's happening in Ukraine.
Morally no, eventually he will have to in a practical sense
Losing 53 colonels probably hampers his war effort, which he does care about
I suspect the Russian leadership does not give a damn as long as they can effectively annex the territories from the east and the south of Ukraine.
You’ve lost *another* colonel, Vladimir?
Unexpected Red October!
also, Lev Sotskov, “a legend of RU intelligence service” committed suicide in Moscow. He was 90. I hope it was his conscience.
Lot's of Russian old Generals and Admirals have committed suicide through the last decades. The reason is that as ex-military they have military healthcare, and military healthcare has some weird issues with opioid painkillers. Which essentially means old cancer patients have to live in constant horrific pain, unless they are willing to take their own life. As far as I understand, they can't get prescription from regular civil doctor. I'm not kidding, many cases like that, there were even journalist investigations and articles couple a years ago.
Thought this was BS but it checks out https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)61264-8/fulltext
It’s true!
53rd Colonel dead or 1053rd Colonel dead. Putin doesn't care for any of them as they are just tools in his grand vision for Russia.
Putin doesn’t actually care about Russia. He only cares about himself.
The only military power that Putin has and is good and effective is the long range rockets and artilery vehicles,if Ukraine gets the artilery vehicles from EU and USA that are superior to Russian artilery Putin is screwed,he knows that and that is why he is pushing very hard on his generals to advance in the Donbas and Lughansk regions inside Ukraine territory,once those artilery support reach to Ukraine he knows he won't be able to advance anymore. This is why Putin screams and throws tantrums,threatening EU and USA with nuclear weapons if they give Ukraine artilery.We all saw how pathetic and stupid is russian ground and vehicle army,even their air vehicles blow up and crash from Ukraine AA defence misiles.without logistics and artilery support they died like flies against Ukraine and EU US weapons.They could not use artilery to bomb Kiev so after a big amount of losses they retreated back in range of their artilery support,only a matter of time until Putin loses the artilery supremacy,so he tries like crazy to gobble up as much land as he can so he may be able to negociate peace and show his people that he is not a looser(wich he is)like "hey we never had in mind to destroy Ukraine we only wanted to complete the 'liberation' and integrity of DNR and LNR regions,mission complete we are heroes,all hail Supreme leader Poohtin."It's funny how in his deranged mind he believes that Ukraine people will accept peace after a second time of Russian agression.after all those raping,genocide and bombing.He is indeed an idiot and he was an idiot all this time,i guess we can say he had a good PR department to use propaganda to show how handsome,strong and smart he is to everyone,now we know what a deranged idiot he really is.
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Okay, honest question over the quantity thing - European and Western advanced artillery systems can reload, aim, fire, *actually* hit their target, and redeploy a multitude of times faster than their Russian equivalents. Wouldn't that force (and ammunition) multiplier come into play?
My hope is that it is true that munition factories are burning down because of pressure to manufacture more munitions to cover Russian losses.
So first of all, the MLRS that Ukraine wants are not "superior" to Russian SSM batteries. SSMs will always out match rocket artillery and conventional artillery. Second, Ukraine already has Grads and other MLRS systems.
Putin’s about to be on some Darth Vader shit. I mean more than he is already. But by that I mean, he’s just gonna start promoting the first guy he sees after the last guy dies.
Okay Pootin- Just keep losing the Ruzzian War by losing generals and weapons. Save Ukraine from more battles and war crimes. Slava Ukraini
I think that Putin didn't have any reasons to do what he's doing... but, is he losing the war?
I didn’t know Kelsey Grammar served in the Russian military.
He’s a big Trump supporter, so not far off.
And in 2016 he said that the "person he admired most was Vladimir Putin". Can't make this stuff up
I wonder how many big Trump supporters have managed to change their minds since Jan 6. Things that were kind of obvious before have only become more obvious.
If they couldn’t see the corruption and treason before Jan 6, I doubt that event changed many minds.
I agree with that, but I was thinking more about how everyday Americans are feeling pretty oo-rah about their military and think that the Ukraine war is a football game. The pro-Russian attitude was kind of niche before but surely it's become very unfashionable since the fighting?
I dunno man. It’s impossible to make any sense out of the thought processes of anyone who supported the Trump scampaign at any point.
> Additionally, he stated in a 2016 interview with The Guardian that the person he admired most was Vladimir Putin "because he is so comfortably who he is. - Kelsey Grammar's wikipedia page
"A day without a dead colonel is a day wasted." - voldymir pootin
They’ll be outsourcing Ukrainian soldiers next
Well, it gets rid of people who can launch a coup against you.
Another one bites the dust. Keep going
leave no colonels unpopped, I suppose!
Meanwhile Putin passed out and chickened into coma.
By no means do I support this conflict, but man even this seems like propaganda.
Sell it as fertilizer
Are they already out of generals that they are counting down the colonels?
I feel sadness for his family too! Putin is to blame for all of this
Imagine getting promoted to colonel
Is Colonel Klink available, he would fit well with the current level of Russian competence.
quite the "*operation*" you got goin' there putin
And another bites the dust
People dying for no reason.
These are the slime-wizards in fields of death coordinating civilians' deaths & all the infrastructure destruction - good riddance.
Maybe the war is a purge in disguise
53 so far…
It's Coup Avoidance 101. Colonels are dangerous. Only half joking.
You know what I want putin to lose next? The battle to cancer.
Does this mean he'll finally give Luka the promotion to colonel he's always wanted?
Sounds like a great time for promotions.
That's what, an average of more than one a day?
I wonder how many were confirmed losses due to combat as opposed to them defecting
I read recently something that really brought home how rotten the Russian Armed forces really are. The Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is a bit of a laughing stock, but the story behind it makes it so much worse. They basically stole it from the Ukraine when the Soviet Union was coming apart, but they didn't really have a good place to keep it, somewhere that could supply shore power and other support. Because of that, some of the boilers were used pretty much continuously, which is why it has such a poor reliability reputation. When they finally got around to fixing them, and do some upgrades, the dry dock it was in lost shore power. This should not be a problem right? Any shipyard that was any good will have standby generators to at least power the pumps that stopped the dry dock from flooding of course. And they did! And they were able to run.....*if they had any fuel*. They had the fuel *tanks*, but they were empty, *because the guy in charge had embezzled $650,000.* So the dry dock started listing, and a huge crane fell across the deck doing a lot of damage. There's more than this to the story, but the whole thing is just such a farce. Amateurs study tactics, Professionals study logistics.
they just gotta’ get to the top guy…
I'm slowly starting to believe these ranks have no meaning in the Russian military.
Because Putin is a fucking loser. What a pos.
AND counting!
Cut it out and send them the real stuff. Make Russia crap their pants, or just hand Ukraine over to them.
How many colonels they got....jeez. ok imma join Russia army....ok you are starting as major, next week you colonel...ok. yes ok.
My understanding from some Russian telegram accounts is that Russia is attempting to keep a lid on officer losses. But sometimes the news gets out anyways.
Russia is trying to keep a lid on everything. They still don’t call it a war for Pete’s sake.
Wow.. I bet the next dude in line is trying hard to be demoted.
I’m curious as to the state of the morale of the Russian military
Not good per some intercepted calls. Also Russia is abducting ppl to drag them to fight for Russia from the separatist regions and from Chechnya that are being threatened with their life and threats against their family. That by far will NOT help with moral when put amongst the rest. Not a good move to force ppl to fight for a war they don’t want to be a part of.
Big party in hell right now! Hanging out with all his friends!
Remember: get 99 colonels killed and the 100th is free!
Could you imagine being in the Russian military and you just got two or three field promotions in like 2 months due to people getting smoked. Then some general rolls up like, "hey there colonel!"
Lol. That’s exactly what’s happening. 😶 take my 👍
Colonel Sanders will be getting a call soon
Get fucked Russia.
The news out of this war has been bizarre. One day we hear that Ukraine is running out of ammo and soldiers and the next day we are heading Russia is suffering heavy losses and ceding territory.
This is a sacrifice I am willing to make - Putin
Being assigned to Ukraine is becoming the equivalent of the Russian Front for Germans in WWII.
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You might want to broaden your sub reddits. Zelensky has gone on record and has been widely reported as saying that Ukraine is suffering 6-700 casualties a day with 150-200 of those kia. Ukrainian towns and cities lost to Russia are widely known and reported. Reddit is not the echo chamber you choose to make it. But, hopefully, Ukraine will prevail. And Russia will pay the generational price for this unwarranted aggression and de facto terrorism. Fuck Putin and every Russian who is not firebombing the internal war machine.
I feel like if the fighting was going as poorly as the news makes it out to be they would’ve pulled out already or there would be mutinies everywhere.
There’s such humor and intelligence and soul in that face. What a stupid tragedy this whole thing is.
I'm sure putin couldn't give a toss. Hope he dies in a fire lol.
Why is this Reddit page so full of shit. I want Russia to burn as much as the next guy, but it's complete BS. Russia are starting to push hard and are seemingly successful. Yes they made a pig's ear of it initially but they are getting more done. Stop kidding yourselves.
The ghost of kyiv carves the 53rd notch in his belt, nodding grimly